Twelve years later, USS Cole commander recalls deadly attack

FILE - In this Oct. 15, 2000 file photo, investigators on a speed boat examine the hull of the USS Cole at the Yemeni port of Aden after a terrorist explosion ripped a hole in the destroyer, killing 17 sailors. (AP Photo/Dimitri Messinis, File)

3139206

On Oct. 12, 2000 the USS Cole was bombed by al-Qaida while at port in Yemen. Almost 12 years later, Commander Kirk Lippold, the man in charge of the ship that day, has written a book telling the story of what happened.

“At the moment of the explosion, the entire ship is lifted up into the air, and within seconds I knew we’d been attacked,” Lippold recounted in a phone interview with The Daily Caller. “I was sitting in my cabin working at my desk. I went back and opened the safe where I kept the keys to the missiles and the torpedoes and the guns, and I pulled out a 9mm pistol, took a deep breath and went outside on the ship.”

“I didn’t know if we were going to be boarded. … All I knew was I had chambered a round, I had two clips of ammunition. … The only thing I could think of [was] I might be facing my destiny, but I’m not leaving a single round in the chamber. The only two things that mattered to me in the moment were protecting my crew and protecting my ship.”

Lippold’s book tells a story that he and his crew members have always felt needed to be told.

“Over time, several authors approached the crew and me about writing, but none ever followed through,” he said. Finally, Lippold decided to do it himself.

Twelve years after the attack, Lippold said people often ask him why it took him so long to put pen to paper.

“I lived through that event, just like my crew, and it literally took nine years to get to a point where I could sit down at a keyboard,” he said. “To write this story was to relive this story … to bring up the pain.”

“I think that in the first few years afterwards, people just wanted time and space away from the event,” he recalled. “They didn’t want to talk about it very much, they wanted to try and move their life forward, but there was always this nagging feeling with most of us that we wanted the story told. And everybody knew that telling it was going to be somewhat painful … but they also wanted it to get done.”

For the past three years, Lippold has been conducting interviews with members of the crew and dredging up his own painful memories of the experience. Speaking about his crew, with whom he is still close, Lippold beams with pride.

In the aftermath of the attack, he said, they “responded magnificently.”

“There was no announcing system to tell them what had happened because it had failed. There were no alarm systems on the ship because the system had failed. So without anyone telling the crew what to do, what had happened, where to go, they fell back on their training and immediately set about saving the ship and saving their shipmates,” he said. “We got the ship stable within a couple hours, to where it wasn’t sinking. To tell you how well the crew did in saving their shipmates —that first day we evacuated 33 wounded off the ship, in 99 minutes, and of those 33, 32 would survive.”